The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Arctic Prairies, by Ernest Thompson Seton (#4 in our series by Ernest Thompson Seton) Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the header without written permission. Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. **Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** **eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** *****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** Title: The Arctic Prairies Author: Ernest Thompson Seton Release Date: November, 2004 [EBook #6818] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on January 27, 2003] Edition: 10 Language: English Character set encoding: ASCII *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE ARCTIC PRAIRIES *** Produced by Bruce Miller; Courtesy of Kevin McCarthy Director of Perrot Memorial Library. The Arctic Prairies A Canoe-Journey OF 2,000 MILES IN SEARCH OF THE CARIBOU BEING THE ACCOUNT OF A VOYAGE TO THE REGION NORTH OF AYLMER LAKE By Ernest Thompson Seton Author of "Wild Animals I Have Known", "Life Histories", Etc. DEDICATED TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE SIR WILFRID LAURIER, G. C. M. G. PREMIER OF CANADA PREFACE What young man of our race would not gladly give a year of his life to roll backward the scroll of time for five decades and live that year in the romantic bygone-days of the Wild West; to see the great Missouri while the Buffalo pastured on its banks, while big game teemed in sight and the red man roamed and hunted, unchecked by fence or hint of white man’s rule; or, when that rule was represented only by scattered trading-posts, hundreds of miles apart, and at best the traders could exchange the news by horse or canoe and months of lonely travel? I for one, would have rejoiced in tenfold payment for the privilege of this backward look in our age, and had reached the middle life before I realised that, at a much less heavy cost, the miracle was possible today. For the uncivilised Indian still roams the far reaches of absolutely unchanged, unbroken forest and prairie leagues, and has knowledge of white men only in bartering furs at the scattered trading-posts, where locomotive and telegraph are unknown; still the wild Buffalo elude the hunters, fight the Wolves, wallow, wander, and breed; and still there is hoofed game by the million to be found where the Saxon is as seldom seen as on the Missouri in the times of Lewis and Clarke. Only we must seek it all, not in the West, but in the far North-west; and for "Missouri and Mississippi" read "Peace and Mackenzie Rivers," those noble streams that northward roll their mile-wide turbid floods a thousand leagues to the silent Arctic Sea. This was the thought which spurred me to a six months’ journey by canoe. And I found what I went in search of, but found, also, abundant and better rewards that were not in mind, even as Saul, the son of Kish, went seeking asses and found for himself a crown and a great kingdom. Four years have gone by since I lived through these experiences. Such a lapse of time may have made my news grow stale, but it has also given the opportunity for the working up of specimens and scientific records. The results, for the most part, will be found in the Appendices, and three of these, as indicated--namely, the sections on Plants, Mammals, and Birds--are the joint work of my assistant, Mr. Edward A. Preble, and myself. My thanks are due here to the Right Honourable Lord Strathcona, G. C. M. G., Governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, for giving me access to the records of the Company whenever I needed them for historical purposes; to the Honourable Frank Oliver, Minister of the Interior, Canada, for the necessary papers and permits to facilitate scientific collection, and also to Clarence C. Chipman, Esq., of Winnipeg, the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Commissioner, for practical help in preparing my outfit, and for letters of introduction to the many officers of the Company, whose kind help was so often a Godsend. ERNEST THOMPSON SETON. CHAPTER I DEPARTURE FOR THE NORTH In 1907 I set out to journey by canoe down the Athabaska and adjoining waters to the sole remaining forest wilds--the far north-west of Canada--and the yet more desert Arctic Plains, where still, it was said, were to be seen the Caribou in their primitive condition. My only companion was Edward A. Preble, of Washington, D. C., a trained naturalist,--an expert canoeist and traveller, and a man of three seasons’ experience in the Hudson’s Bay Territory and the Mackenzie Valley. While my chief object was to see the Caribou, and prove their continued abundance, I was prepared incidentally to gather natural-history material of all kinds, and to complete the shore line of the ambiguous lake called "Aylmer," as well as explore its sister, the better-known Clinton-Colden. I went for my own pleasure at my own expense, and yet I could not persuade my Hudson’s Bay Company friends that I was not sent by some government, museum or society for some secret purpose. On the night of May 5 we left Winnipeg, and our observations began with the day at Brandon. From that point westward to Regina we saw abundant evidence that last year had been a "rabbit year," that is, a year in which the ever-fluctuating population of Northern Hares (Snowshoe-rabbits or White-rabbits) had reached its maximum, for nine-tenths of the bushes in sight from the train had been barked at the snow level. But the fact that we saw not one Rabbit shows that "the plague" had appeared, had run its usual drastic course, and nearly exterminated the species in this particular region. Early next morning at Kininvie (40 miles west of Medicine Hat, Alberta) we saw a band of 4 Antelope south of the track; later we saw others all along as far as Gleichen. All were south of the track. The bands contained as follows: 4, 14, 18, 8, 12, 8, 4, 1, 4, 5, 4, 6, 4, 18, 2, 6, 34, 6, 3, 1, 10, 25, 16, 3, 7, 9 (almost never 2, probably because this species does not pair), or 232 Antelope in 26 bands along 70 miles of track; but all were on the south side; not one was noted on the north. The case is simple. During the past winter, while the Antelope were gone southward, the Canadian Pacific Railway Company had fenced its track. In spring the migrants, returning, found themselves cut off from their summer feeding-grounds by those impassable barb-wires, and so were gathered against the barrier. One band of 8, at a stopping place, ran off when they saw passengers alighting, but at half a mile they turned, and again came up against the fence, showing how strong is the northward impulse. Unless they learn some way of mastering the difficulty, it means extermination for the Antelope of the north Saskatchewan. From Calgary we went by train to Edmonton. This is the point of leaving the railway, the beginning of hard travel, and here we waited a few days to gather together our various shipments of food and equipment, and to await notice that the river was open. In the north the grand event of the year is the opening of the rivers. The day when the ice goes out is the official first day of spring, the beginning of the season; and is eagerly looked for, as every day’s delay means serious loss to the traders, whose men are idle, but drawing pay as though at work. On May 11, having learned that the Athabaska was open, we left Edmonton in a livery rig, and drove 94 miles northward though a most promising, half-settled country, and late the next day arrived at Athabaska Landing, on the great east tributary of the Mackenzie, whose waters were to bear us onward for so many weeks. Athabaska Landing is a typical frontier town. These are hard words, but justified. We put up at the principal hotel; the other lodgers told me it was considered the worst hotel in the world. I thought I knew of two worse, but next morning accepted the prevailing view. Our canoe and provisions arrived, but the great convoy of scows that were to take the annual supplies of trade stuff for the far north was not ready, and we needed the help and guidance of its men, so must needs wait for four days. This gave us the opportunity to study the local natural history and do a little collecting, the results of which appear later. The great size of the timber here impressed me. I measured a typical black poplar (P. balsamifera), 100 feet to the top, 8 feet 2 inches in circumference, at 18 inches from the ground, and I saw many thicker, but none taller. At the hotel, also awaiting the scows, was a body of four (dis-)Mounted Police, bound like ourselves for the far north. The officer in charge turned out to be an old friend from Toronto, Major A. M. Jarvis. I also met John Schott, the gigantic half-breed, who went to the Barren Grounds with Caspar Whitney in 1895. He seemed to have great respect for Whitney as a tramper, and talked much of the trip, evidently having forgotten his own shortcomings of the time. While I sketched his portrait, he regaled me with memories of his early days on Red River, where he was born in 1841. 1 did not fail to make what notes I could of those now historic times. His accounts of the Antelope on White Horse Plain, in 1855, and Buffalo about the site of Carberry, Manitoba, in 1852, were new and valuable light on the ancient ranges of these passing creatures. All travellers who had preceded me into the Barren Grounds had relied on the abundant game, and in consequence suffered dreadful hardships; in some cases even starved to death. I proposed to rely on no game, but to take plenty of groceries, the best I could buy in Winnipeg, which means the best in the world; and, as will be seen later, the game, because I was not relying on it, walked into camp every day. But one canoe could not carry all these provisions, so most of it I shipped on the Hudson’s Bay Company scows, taking with us, in the canoe, food for not more than a week, which with camp outfit was just enough for ballast. Of course I was in close touch with the Hudson’s Bay people. Although nominally that great trading company parted with its autocratic power and exclusive franchise in 1870, it is still the sovereign of the north. And here let me correct an error that is sometimes found even in respectable print--the Company has at all times been ready to assist scientists to the utmost of its very ample power. Although jealous of its trading rights, every one is free to enter the territory without taking count of the Company, but there has not yet been a successful scientific expedition into the region without its active co-operation. The Hudson’s Bay Company has always been the guardian angel of the north. I suppose that there never yet was another purely commercial concern that so fully realized the moral obligations of its great power, or that has so uniformly done its best for the people it ruled. At all times it has stood for peace, and one hears over and over again that such and such tribes were deadly enemies, but the Company insisted on their smoking the peace pipe. The Sioux and Ojibway, Black-Foot and Assiniboine., Dog-Rib and Copper-Knife, Beaver and Chipewyan, all offer historic illustrations in point, and many others could be found for the list. The name Peace River itself is the monument of a successful effort on the part of the Company to bring about a better understanding between the Crees and the Beavers. Besides human foes, the Company has saved the Indian from famine and plague. Many a hunger-stricken tribe owes its continued existence to the fatherly care of the Company, not simply general and indiscriminate, but minute and personal, carried into the details of their lives. For instance, when bots so pestered the Caribou of one region as to render their hides useless to the natives, the Company brought in hides from a district where they still were good. The Chipewyans were each spring the victims of snow-blindness until the Company brought and succeeded in popularizing their present ugly but effectual and universal peaked hats. When their train-dogs were running down in physique, the Company brought in a strain of pure Huskies or Eskimo. When the Albany River Indians were starving and unable to hunt, the Company gave the order for 5,000 lodge poles. Then, not knowing how else to turn them to account, commissioned the Indians to work them into a picket garden-fence. At all times the native found a father in the Company, and it was the worst thing that ever happened the region when the irresponsible free-traders with their demoralizing methods were allowed to enter and traffic where or how they pleased. CHAPTER II DOWN THE NOISY RIVER WITH THE VOYAGEURS At Athabaska Landing, on May 18, 1907, 10.15 A. M., we boarded the superb Peterborough canoe that I had christened the Ann Seton. The Athabaska River was a-flood and clear of ice; 13 scows of freight, with 60 half-breeds and Indians to man them, left at the same time, and in spite of a strong headwind we drifted northward fully 31 miles an hour. The leading scow, where I spent some time, was in charge of John MacDonald himself, and his passengers comprised the Hudson’s Bay Company officials, going to their posts or on tours of inspection. They were a jolly crowd, like a lot of rollicking schoolboys, full of fun and good-humour, chaffing and joking all day; but when a question of business came up, the serious businessman appeared in each, and the Company’s interest was cared for with their best powers. The bottle was not entirely absent in these scow fraternities, but I saw no one the worse for liquor on the trip. The men of mixed blood jabbered in French, Cree, and Chipewyan chiefly, but when they wanted to swear, they felt the inadequacy of these mellifluous or lisping tongues, and fell back on virile Saxon, whose tang, projectivity, and wealth of vile epithet evidently supplied a long-felt want in the Great Lone Land of the Dog and Canoe. In the afternoon Preble and I pushed on in our boat, far in advance of the brigade. As we made early supper I received for the twentieth time a lesson in photography. A cock Partridge or Ruffed Grouse came and drummed on a log in open view, full sunlight, fifty feet away. I went quietly to the place. He walked off, but little alarmed. I set the camera eight feet from the log, with twenty-five feet of tubing, and retired to a good hiding-place. But alas! I put the tube on the left-hand pump, not knowing that that was a dummy. The Grouse came back in three minutes, drumming in a superb pose squarely in front of the camera. I used the pump, but saw that it failed to operate; on going forward the Grouse skimmed away and returned no more. Preble said, "Never mind; there will be another every hundred yards all the way down the river, later on." I could only reply, "The chance never comes but once," and so it proved. We heard Grouse drumming many times afterward, but the sun was low, or the places densely shaded, or the mosquitoes made conditions impossible for silent watching; the perfect chance came but once, as it always does, and I lost it. About twenty miles below the Landing we found the abandoned winter hut of a trapper; on the roof were the dried up bodies of 1 Skunk, 2 Foxes, and 30 Lynxes, besides the bones of 2 Moose, showing the nature of the wild life about. That night, as the river was brimming and safe, we tied up to the scows and drifted, making 30 more miles, or 60 since embarking. In the early morning, I was much struck by the lifelessness of the scene. The great river stretched away northward, the hills rose abruptly from the water’s edge, everywhere extended the superb spruce forest, here fortunately unburnt; but there seemed no sign of living creature outside of our own numerous, noisy, and picturesque party. River, hills, and woods were calm and silent. It was impressive, if disappointing; and, when at last the fir stillness was broken by a succession of trumpet notes from the Great Pileated Woodpecker, the sound went rolling on and on, in reverberating echoes that might well have alarmed the bird himself. The white spruce forest along the banks is most inspiring, magnificent here. Down the terraced slopes and right to the water’s edge on the alluvial soil it stands in ranks. Each year, of course, the floods undercut the banks, and more trees fall, to become at last the flotsam of the shore a thousand miles away. There is something sad about these stately trees, densely packed, all a-row, unflinching, hopelessly awaiting the onset of the inexorable, invincible river. One group, somewhat isolated and formal, was a forest life parallel to Lady Butler’s famous "Roll Call of the Grenadiers." At night we reached the Indian village of Pelican Portage, and landed by climbing over huge blocks of ice that were piled along the shore. The adult male inhabitants came down to our camp, so that the village was deserted, except for the children and a few women. As I walked down the crooked trail along which straggle the cabins, I saw something white in a tree at the far end. Supposing it to be a White-rabbit in a snare, I went near and found, to my surprise, first that it was a dead house-cat, a rare species here; second, under it, eyeing it and me alternately, was a hungry-looking Lynx. I had a camera, for it was near sundown, and in the woods, so I went back to the boat and returned with a gun. There was the Lynx still prowling, but now farther from the village. I do not believe he would have harmed the children, but a Lynx is game. I fired, and he fell without a quiver or a sound. This was the first time I had used a gun in many years, and was the only time on the trip. I felt rather guilty, but the carcass was a godsend to two old Indians who were sickening on a long diet of salt pork, and that Lynx furnished them tender meat for three days afterward; while its skin and skull went to the American Museum. On the night of May 20, we camped just above Grand Rapids--Preble and I alone, for the first time, under canvas, and glad indeed to get away from the noisy rabble of the boatmen, though now they were but a quarter mile off. At first I had found them amusing and picturesque, but their many unpleasant habits, their distinct aversion to strangers, their greediness to get all they could out of one, and do nothing in return, combined finally with their habit of gambling all night to the loud beating of a tin pan, made me thankful to quit their company for a time. At Grand Rapids the scows were unloaded, the goods shipped over a quarter-mile hand tramway, on an island, the scows taken down a side channel, one by one, and reloaded. This meant a delay of three or four days, during which we camped on the island and gathered specimens. Being the organizer, equipper, geographer, artist, head, and tail of the expedition, I was, perforce, also its doctor. Equipped with a "pill-kit," an abundance of blisters and bandages and some "potent purgatives," I had prepared myself to render first and last aid to the hurt in my own party. In taking instructions from our family physician, I had learned the value of a profound air of great gravity, a noble reticence, and a total absence of doubt, when I did speak. I compressed his creed into a single phrase: "In case of doubt, look wise and work on his ’bowels.’" This simple equipment soon gave me a surprisingly high standing among the men. I was a medicine man of repute, and soon had a larger practice than I desired, as it was entirely gratuitous. The various boatmen, Indians and half-breeds, came with their troubles, and, thanks chiefly to their faith, were cured. But one day John MacDonald, the chief pilot and a mighty man on the river, came to my tent on Grand Island. John complained that he couldn’t hold anything on his stomach; he was a total peristaltic wreck indeed (my words; his were more simple and more vivid, but less sonorous and professional). He said he had been going down hill for two weeks, and was so bad now that he was "no better than a couple of ordinary men." "Exactly so," I said. "Now you take these pills and you’ll be all right in the morning." Next morning John was back, and complained that my pills had no effect; he wanted to feel something take hold of him. Hadn’t 1 any pepper-juice or brandy? I do not take liquor on an expedition, but at the last moment a Winnipeg friend had given me a pint flask of pure brandy--"for emergencies." An emergency had come. "John! you shall have some extra fine brandy, nicely thinned with pepper-juice." I poured half an inch of brandy into a tin cup, then added half an inch of "pain-killer." "Here, take this, and if you don’t feel it, it means your insides are dead, and you may as well order your coffin." John took it at a gulp. His insides were not dead; but I might have been, had I been one of his boatmen. He doubled up, rolled around, and danced for five minutes. He did not squeal--John never squeals--but he suffered some, and an hour later announced that he was about cured. Next day he came to say he was all right, and would soon again be as good as half a dozen men. At this same camp in Grand Rapids another cure on a much larger scale was added to my list. An Indian had "the bones of his foot broken," crushed by a heavy weight, and was badly crippled. He came leaning on a friend’s shoulder. His foot was blackened and much swollen, but I soon satisfied myself that no bones were broken, because he could wriggle all the toes and move the foot in any direction. "You’ll be better in three days and all right in a week," I said, with calm assurance. Then I began with massage. It seemed necessary in the Indian environment to hum some tune, and I found that the "Koochy-Koochy" lent itself best to the motion, so it became my medicine song. With many "Koochy-Koochy"-ings and much ice-cold water he was nearly cured in three days, and sound again in a week. But in the north folk have a habit (not known elsewhere) of improving the incident. Very soon it was known all along the river that the Indian’s leg was broken, and I had set and healed it in three days. In a year or two, I doubt not, it will be his neck that was broken, not once, but in several places. Grand Island yielded a great many Deermice of the arctic form, a few Red-backed Voles, and any number of small birds migrant. As we floated down the river the eye was continually held by tall and prominent spruce trees that had been cut into peculiar forms as below. These were known as "lob-sticks," or "lop-sticks," and are usually the monuments of some distinguished visitor in the country or records of some heroic achievement. Thus, one would be pointed out as Commissioner Wrigley’s lob-stick, another as John MacDonald’s the time he saved the scow. The inauguration of a lob-stick is quite a ceremony. Some person in camp has impressed all with his importance or other claim to notice. The men, having talked it over, announce that they have decided on giving him a lob-stick. "Will he make choice of some prominent tree in view?" The visitor usually selects one back from the water’s edge, often on some far hilltop, the more prominent the better; then an active young fellow is sent up with an axe to trim the tree. The more embellishment the higher the honor. On the trunk they then inscribe the name of the stranger, and he is supposed to give each of the men a plug of tobacco and a drink of whiskey. Thus they celebrate the man and his monument, and ever afterwards it is pointed out as "So-and-so’s lob-stick." It was two months before my men judged that I was entitled to a lob-stick. We were then on Great Slave Lake where the timber was small, but the best they could get on a small island was chosen and trimmed into a monument. They were disappointed however, to find that I would by no means give whiskey to natives, and my treat had to take a wholly different form. Grand Rapids, with its multiplicity of perfectly round pot-hole boulders, was passed in four days, and then, again in company with the boats, we entered the real canyon of the river.